""As the first world war drew to a close, work began in the Scandinavian countries to try and position the Nordic region as a central area for international Science. The argument was that since scientific cooperation between the European countries had been interrupted by the war, the Scandinavian countries ought to take on the task of mending the broken threads. In 1919, both Norway and Denmark established substantial government research funds, and Norway even a scientific institute for international cultural research. From its inauguration, The Scientific Research Fund of 1919 decided to study and investigate the Viking remains in the British Isles. The actual task of collecting the materials was undertaken by well-respected Norwegian archaeologists during journeys in Britain and Ireland during the 1920s. Starting in 1940, 6 volumes of Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland were published, with Prof. Haakon Shetelig in Bergen as the editor. There were separate volumes on finds and monuments in England, in Ireland, and in Scotland, as well as a volume presenting the Insular metal finds in Scandinavia. Today, 70 years on, Sheteligs volumes are still standard references. But burial archaeology has moved on considerably since the mid-20th century. What was once thought to be certain Viking burials are now under scrutiny. What is, after all, a Viking burial? Presumably, a burial of someone with a non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Celtic and also non-Christian identity. But how do we recognize a deceased persons identity from burial remains? The question of otherness in the British or Irish context is important in this respect, but it could be argued that this presupposes a typical form of Viking burial in the Scandinavian homelands. Since morturary customs in the Nordic countries are in fact varied to the extreme, one might conclude that it is almost impossible to distinguish Viking burials in England, Ireland, or Scotland. However, when we look at the distribution of burials which because of either their furnishings, their rite (i.e. cremation) or their situation could be argued as belonging to intruding people of Scandinavian origin, an interesting pattern emerges. There are clear differences between Viking graves in the different parts of the British Isles. While such graves are relatively few and isolated in England and also in Ireland with the exception of the large Kilmainham-Islandbridge cemetery in Dublin, they occur much more frequently in Scotland, and particularly in the Northern Isles, and there are also interesting differences between would-be Scandinavian graves in these different areas. It is likely that these differences reflect very different forms of interaction between people of Scandinavian origin and the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Pictish populations of the British Isles. Furthermore, a closer study of such differences might tell us more about where in the Nordic area the Scandinavians originated.""